Join Us for Breakfast in Denver

Yes, we will hold our annual JOMC Docs breakfast at the AEJMC conference in Denver. It will be at 7 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 6, in one of the meeting rooms at the Sheraton Downtown, the conference hotel.

Watch for more on this, and please make plans to join us for a hot breakfast buffet, with plenty of good coffee and tea.

We’ll be sharing in updates about JOMC and elsewhere as well as electing our next second vice president.

Look for Chapel Hill Homecoming at 2010 SE Colloquium

By Rachel Davis Mersey

The Southeast Colloquium is returning to Chapel Hill for the fourth time since the conference’s founding in 1976, and you are invited to participate in its “homecoming.”

In conjunction with the 2010 Colloquium, which will be held March 11-13, we will be hosting a Ph.D. alumni reunion. The details of the event are coming together but for the purposes of scheduling, please know we are planning a casual dinner event–think Carolina pig pickin’–on Friday, March 12. There are no official colloquium events scheduled during this time. It will be a time to connect with graduates and faculty members, and revisit your roots.

Please look for details related to the reunion in the coming months. You can find out more about the SEC online at http://www.jomc.unc.edu/SEC2010. The postmark deadline for submissions is Dec. 4, 2009.

The colloquium’s headquarters hotel will be the Carolina Inn. Think of booking soon.

If you have any questions in the meantime or ideas for the event, please contact Rachel Davis Mersey (’07) at rdmersey@northwestern.edu. Go ‘Heels!

Tim Bajkiewicz Elected

Tim Bajkiewicz (Ph.D., 2002) was elected vice president of the UNC Ph.D. Alumni Association during the Aug. 7 annual breakfast.

Tim is an associate professor of broadcast journalism in the School of Mass Communication at Virginia Commonwealth University. He joined VCU in Fall 2008 after seven years on faculty in the School of Mass Communications at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He will become president of the organization in 2011-2012.

Tim Bajkiewicz

Tim was a Park Fellow in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was co-recipient of the “Outstanding Ph.D. Student” award in 2001 at UNC-Chapel Hill.

His research on new media and news convergence has been published in the journal Electronic News and in two book chapters. He has also authored text book chapters about online writing and postmodern content analysis media research. He currently serves as webmaster for AEJMC’s Radio-TV Journalism Division.

2009 Breakfast a Success!

About 70 people attended the fourth annual alumni breakfast in Boston Aug. 7.

In addition to catching up with old friends and meeting new UNC doctoral students, we celebrated accomplishments this year, including creating this blog and establishing our mentor program. We also heard about activities for the future including the March reunion event in Chapel Hill and fundraising for the School.

Associate dean for Graduate Studies Dr. Anne Johnston and Dean Jean Folkerts updated us on the many accomplishments of our students and Ph.D. program. Speed Hallman, associate dean for development and alumni affairs, discussed some of the ways Tarheels can financially give back to the School.

Thanks to all who attended and contributed to the event, including the School of Journalism and Mass Communication which funded the breakfast. We look forward to seeing you for next year’s breakfast at AEJMC in Denver!

Candidates Needed!

During the annual AEJMC breakfast, we will hold the election for the next vice president of the Ph.D. Alumni Association. This person would serve as VP for the 2009-2010 year, president-elect for 2010-2011, and president for 2011-2012.

If you would like to nominate someone for the position, please contact him/her about willingness to serve, and then send the nomination to John Carvalho at carvajp@auburn.edu by July 31.

AEJMC Events

We look forward to seeing all of you at the AEJMC annual conference in Boston! The UNC Ph.D. Alumni Association breakfast is scheduled for Friday from 7-8 a.m. in the Commonwealth Room at the Downtown Sheraton, the conference hotel. Please RSVP by Friday, July 31 to Johanna Cleary at jcleary@jou.ufl.edu.

And, plan to join us when UNC co-hosts a reception Thursday night at the conference. The reception is from 6:45-8:15 p.m. in Room 194. The full AEJMC schedule is now available at  http://www.aejmc.org/_events/convention/program/index.php

 

We Want You!

We’re looking for a few good mentors! In a recent survey, the membership of the UNC Ph.D. Alumni Association said it supports mentoring new and soon-to-be graduates.

Some of the ways a mentor could assist a mentee is through providing a sounding board and suggestions on navigating tenure, offering thoughts about developing and advancing a research agenda, and suggesting general strategies and career advice.

If you are interested in serving as a mentor or mentee, please send your name and e-mail contact information to Tori Ekstrand at vekstra@bgsu.edu

When You Post Here

As soon as you’re registered into this blog, you can post a note. You’re all no doubt blog-savvy by now, but here’s a quick reminder to shop along the rightside menu bar to click on boxes of appropriate categories.

By adding categories, you ensure that your item will be indexed with like items. Someone who wants to check on, say, a newly minted JOMC Ph.D. can click on New Ph.D. grads! for a list of all recent items on the topic.

I’m going to cheat here and add a bunch of categories to the bottom of this note. Reason: The categories won’t show on the home page’s menu bar until they are used once. Now, I hope, they’ll inspire ideas for your next great post.

First On the Site

Kudos to Leslie-Jean Thornton (Arizona State), experienced digital edu-adventurer, for becoming first member to comment and join our blog group. This means LJ can now post her own thoughtful and occasionally hilarious notes. She is good at this.

We’re looking for many more members to join the blog soon. Please do.

WordPress indexes blog users via e-mail accounts. If you send me your e-mail address at gscott3@elon.edu, I will key it into WordPress’s database. At the same time, go to wordpress.com and sign up. (Again, be sure to click on the username only please button at the bottom of the registration page. If you click on the other button — the one to create your own blog — you won’t find yourself on ours.)

If you’re already registered on another WordPress blog, no worries. Just let me know. I’ll add your address to ours, and you’ll be ready to join our discussion.

Welcome to Our Blog

This blog is for you if:

• Imagery of the second and third floors of Carroll Hall (or Howell Hall) remains imprinted in your memory — and has been known to appear in those 3 a.m. nightmares.
• Your old carrel on the seventh floor of Davis Library has been vacant since you returned the 46 books on mass comm theory but left behind a few forlorn 4X6 index cards with bibliographic notes from your dissertation.
• Your idea of ‘attending’ a UNC football game was to open your office window to hear the cheers while you worked on a media law paper.
• Your preference for a satisfying bit of late-night reading is to re-read a chapter in Peggy Blanchard’s Revolutionary Sparks.
• You’re willing to rise before sunrise at AEJMC conferences for the chance to share bagels with juice with people wearing traces of Carolina blue in their outfits, if not their histories.

Welcome friends, classmates, colleagues, mentors, peers.  This is where we can talk. This is a blog for the JOMC Ph.D. Alumni Association, where all participants are way above average and everyone has an almost-equal chance to post.

Please see our About JOMC Docs page for information on joining this conversation. For now, you can take the first step by going to the WordPress site and signing up.  Key point: At the bottom of the registration page, be very sure to click on the button create username only. The nickname you provide will be the name that appears on the top of your blog posts. We suggest using your own name — or at least the name you used in the doctoral program.

When you post here, click on the boxes of applicable categories from the right-side menu. This will help us find like posts later. If you want to add tags, that will help with larger searches.

Help Guide Our Group

In Boston, we’ll be electing a new officer to serve as vice president.  If you’re interested in the role, or if you’d like to nominate another member, shoot me an e-mail note at gscott3@elon.edu.

We’ll field nominees now and vote during our AEJMC convention breakfast meeting at 7 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 7.

Our charter — courtesy of Tori Smith Ekstrand (Bowling Green) — identifies three executive posts,  moving from vice president to president-elect to president.

As y’all know, Johanna Cleary (Florida)  is our president through September.  I’m next in line. John Carvalho (Auburn) is vice president.

If you’d like to know more, find one of us. Here are  links for Johanna, Glenn and John.